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Generating Income During Retirement with the Internet

The Wall Street Journal highlighted some unusual ways to boost income during retirement but I felt like the article left a lot to be desired in both what it included and what it was missing. Unlike most articles produced by the journal this piece felt like it was quickly put together without much thought or research.

My first problem with the article is that besides the suggestion of growing trees I don’t think the list is all that unusual. Granted, I write on a personal finance blog and read more sites daily than I would like to admit, so maybe I see more posts about renting a room or peer to peer lending than the average person. Secondly, it just doesn’t feel right that investing in preferred stocks is on the same list as the active earned income tutoring.

Lastly, besides Peer to Peer lending the options ignored the possibilities found on the internet for Retirees.

Online Income Options for Retirees

While I recently discussed the boring, usual ways for to boost investment income, I didn’t talk about active online endeavors. To be fair, these options aren’t just for retirees, but I think experience and time would help:

Starting a Blog – I clearly have a lot of experience in this arena. Some of my favorite blogs are written by a completely generation than myself. Their experience in navigating life makes for an excellent read and provides a road map for a younger generation.

Freelancing – While I use quite a few freelancers to run my various sites, I have no experience as a provider. Notwithstanding there are always bloggers out there who need content and what a great way to generate income without having to actually deal with the other annoying factors of the blog.

Paid Surveys – I don’t have a lot of experience visiting survey sites and participating in paid surveys but I would think that the opinions of a retiree would be valuable to most marketing companies.

Each of my options have a learning or experience curve but they all can provide a stream of income that is perfect for a retiree (i.e. part time and low stress).

10 Responses to Generating Income During Retirement with the Internet

I think they are great options for technology savvy retirees but if you told my mom to do any of those she’d look at you like you were crazy. Anyone can do it with some effort though, you just have to be willing to learn.

Grow trees… That is something my in-laws are actually doing. They inherited about 80 acres of so-so farm land. The options they had were to lease it to a local farmer (which some years turns out great and some years doesn’t at all) or grow trees. They went with growing Christmas Trees. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, since we are having a horrible drought this year and it could set them back a year or two.

Growing trees might be a lucrative business… but in retirement? I doubt you’ll make much at that point, unless you had the foresight to plant then in your youth. It would take too long to grow them to really start making any income if you started after retirement, and if you bought a tree farm with the hopes of selling them, you’d be paying more and have to make back that original cost before you’d have any profit!

That seems like the WSJ was looking too hard for a hook to get readers to read an otherwise hum-drum article.

In contrast, the technology aspect you mention actually has potential to make income on the side, with very little initial outlay and relatively short time to realize the income.

I’ve done both freelancing and of course blogging. (The blog was kind of a platform to bring about some freelancing opportunities.)

If someone wants to do one of these two things for retirement income, the main question is how much consistency they are willing to put in.

-Freelancing doesn’t scale very well, which is why I stopped doing it. It doesn’t work over years to build momentum. But writing high quality freelance articles in an area of expertise can generate some decent side income and it takes less technical knowledge to do it (no SEO, no blog tech maintenance, etc.)

-Blogging can potentially scale very well, but several skill sets need to be involved for it to work (SEO, website maintenance, personal skills, writing skills, market research for what people are interested in, and so forth.)

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